New pfSense Box

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So the time has come to replace the firewall/router at my parents' house. It's a first-generation Cobalt RaQ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_RaQ ) running Debian Linux, and can't keep up with their recently-upgraded Internet connection. Fortunately, it doesn't take a whole lot to outperform a 150 MHz MIPS-32 processor, so I was able to build a new pfSense box with a minimum of purchased components and a bunch of spare parts.

The Mini ITX chassis was super-cheap because it came with only the case and power supply. Someone had removed all of the 40mm fans (even the one in the power supply!) and replaced them with a single huge 120mm fan cut into the top of the case. For $0.99, I was willing to repair it! Started with adding a fan back into the power supply:

The motherboard fits fine. It doesn't matter if you don't have an I/O shield for the motherboard since most of them won't fit in 1U rack enclosures anyway. Cable routing can be a pain, so I usually cut off the extra sets of Molex/SATA connectors and heat shrink the cut off ends. The power supply that came with the case is a 300W unit with six drive power connectors, which will never be used. I left one chain of three connectors and tucked the wires into the space between the motherboard and the front:

I'm still waiting on the right-angle PCI bracket to arrive, so I found a tall network card where the ports would be accessible above the edge of the 1U case. This one is a 3Com card that uses a fiber optic connection. It's picked up under pfSense/FreeBSD's `xl` driver:

With all of the hardware in place, grab your favorite live distro (mine is Slax: http://www.slax.org ) and a copy of the pfSense NanoBSD image appropriately sized for your Flash module, and load it. This machine only has USB 1.1, so I booted Slax and piped the pfSense image over the network using netcat. On the server: